BNPL Wahala: Building Products, Breaking Trust
The BNPL market is booming across Africa, promising access to goods, but the stories emerging from debt collection tactics are truly disturbing. We're building tech, but are we building trust?
That story about Moses and CDcare? My chest tighten just reading it. Twenty-one orders, three years, never missed a beat. Then one hiccup on a laptop instalment, he reaches out himself to make it right, and their response is a single, cold "Ok." The next day, an agent is at his landlord's door, sharing his national ID and account screenshots. Ah, bros, what is this?
This Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) thing was supposed to be a game-changer for people. In a country where access to credit is harder than finding original spare parts in Ladipo market, BNPL came along like a beacon. You need that phone for your online hustle in Akure? That fridge for your small restaurant in Calabar? BNPL makes it possible. We're talking about a market projected to hit nearly $4 billion in Nigeria alone by 2031. Massive potential, right? But the reality... the reality is often messy.
The Algorithm of Aggression
When I build a product, I'm thinking about the user experience, the flow, the database schema, security. But reading about these collection tactics, I have to wonder: what kind of product spec leads to this? Is there a feature ticket that says, "Harass customer's landlord," or "Publicly shame defaulters"? Seriously, what kind of backend system allows an agent to just pull up a national ID and share it without a second thought? This isn't just an operations problem; it’s a failure in ethical product design and data governance from the ground up.
The stories are painful to hear. A dispatch rider in Ibadan, once called "boss," now screamed at like a criminal. A food vendor in Bodija, her guarantor contacted, her photo circulated after just two missed payments. This isn't just about recovering debt; it's about destroying reputations and livelihoods. For many, especially informal workers, their dignity is their currency. Taking that away for a missed payment? It's the kind of desperation that makes you question the entire intent of these platforms. It reminds me of the raw, chaotic energy you find in an Owerri bus park, but instead of physical jostling, it's digital humiliation.
Beyond Our Borders, Same Problems
And it's not just Nigeria. Kenya has its own demons with digital lockouts, where devices are remotely disabled after a couple of missed payments, sometimes without warning. Imagine your phone, which is your entire business, your connection to clients, your digital wallet – suddenly a brick. For many, that's not just an inconvenience; it's lost income, a lost day, maybe even a lost business. Lipa Later in Kenya going under administration earlier in 2025 hints at how fragile these models can be when growth outpaces sustainable, ethical operations. South Africa also battling high fees for late payments, preying on the financially vulnerable.
Regulators are trying to play catch-up. Nigeria's FCCPC setting deadlines, banning harassment, putting hundreds of unregistered apps on their radar. Kenya licensing more providers. Good, good. But the article says it plainly: "enforcement remains weak." How do you enforce good behaviour in a digital space that moves faster than legislation? It’s like trying to catch wind with a fishing net.
The Root of the Technical Mess: Data Silos
Here’s the technical kicker, the fundamental flaw: "Most BNPL providers in Africa operate without sharing data." This is a huge problem. It means a delinquent borrower can jump from one platform to another, racking up more debt, because no one has a holistic view of their credit history. From a software architecture perspective, what we need is a robust, secure, and trusted central credit reporting system or API that all these BNPL platforms can plug into. This isn't just a "nice to have"; it's foundational for a healthy, responsible credit ecosystem. But who builds it? Who governs it? And how do you ensure the data is secure and used ethically when even individual companies are misusing personal info? It's a massive undertaking, but without it, we'll keep seeing this cycle of debt and despair.
As someone who spends his days building, shipping, and thinking about product-market fit, this kind of news makes you pause. It's easy to get caught up in the hype of growth, the projections, the investor meetings. But at the core, we're building tools for people. And if those tools, by design or by operational negligence, cause this much pain and erosion of trust, then what are we really building?
We, as developers and founders in this ecosystem, have a responsibility. Not just to build functional software, but to build ethical software. To design systems that protect user data, that don't enable harassment, and that offer a pathway for recovery, not just punishment. The "no gree for anybody" spirit should be about pushing boundaries, not pushing people to their breaking point. Let's make sure the code we ship is code we can stand by, even when sapa hits.
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